Letterpress Poster Printing ... And A Little Wood Type Puzzle Solved

 I've been doing more printing lately. This is the first poster I've ever printed. I am pretty happy with it! It was a give-away for my demonstration at our Farmer's Market - we had a bit of a celebration on the first day of the new Cottage Food Law, and I figured, why not promote the really big event of the season: The Harvest Fair!  The demonstration was fun and I met a couple of printers - boy they must be right that once printer's ink gets into your veins it never goes away,  because nobody gets excited to see my type the way former printers do. It is worthwhile to hold a little exhibit just for the chance to make some erstwhile printers really really really happy! :-)


After I started looking at my little Line-o-Scribe proof press to figure out how to use it for a portable demonstrating press, I remembered a couple of cases of very small wood type that I bought when I was first outfitting my shop and haven't used before. They are small fonts and, lucky for me or I never would have gotten them, were not as desireable at the time for people looking for that large newspaper and poster faces they could print with their Vandercooks. Turns out these are perfect for flyer-sized posters on my press.

 

 Now, here is the wood-type puzzle I mentioned in the title:

A little oddity of note: see that "4" in the lower right (stage right) corner? When I first set it, it was backward! And another small face also had backward - aka not mirror image - fours! I kept turning it upside down to try to fix it, about drove me batty. Then after a couple of days, I looked at the pieces of type again.


Can you solve the puzzle? 


Answer is below,








under the photo...

 

'

'


'

When I looked at the type after clearing my mind, I was able to see that they didn't need to be flipped 180 degrees, but turned a quarter turn.

In both fonts, the number crossbars for the number fours are exactly the same length. Thus, when standing on their crossbars, they look like they are non-mirror-image cutouts.  It was just a fluke that they were all turned
wrong in their case, looking for all the world like they belonged that way!

Historic Jefferson, Texas

Pat at And So It Goes In Shreveport is having fun this summer blogging their day trips and outings. Her most recent is about the Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport - on my list if we ever get to actually stop while passing through the town! We passed through - going and coming - this past week on our way to South Carolina - I took a picture! I told Paul I am going to blog about the places we saw the signs for. Heh.

Anyway, last week Pat walked the reader up and down the picturesque streets of Jefferson Texas. We went to Jefferson a couple of years ago, rounding off a visit to Marshall to go to the Friends of the Library sale. That was the sale where I bought a copy of Alexander McCall's "Tears of the Giraffe" and was introduced to Precious Ramotswe and her neighbors in Botswanna. I enjoyed the book so much I immediately went and bought all the rest of the series. They are simply wonderful: inspiring books that can remind how one person just being her best self can make life a little easier. Funny that sometimes the nicest memories come from small events in out of the way places.

Jefferson is a lovely little town, and we had a good time wandering its streets, shopping its many antique stores, and enjoying good food. I think you will too. Go over and check out Pat's post, then see if you can't work a short trip into your summer schedule.

Ain't That America? Pat Austin Takes A Daydream of a Southern Road Trip

Go on over to And So It Goes In Shreveport, and feel the tension disappear. Feel the world right itself again, and remember how it feels to go home in America.

Imagine walking down the railroad tracks, and exploring abandoned old stores and still-full-every-Sunday frame churches with their steeples standing in fields of verdant and wild green.

Imagine the flowering of industry sprouting up as drilling rigs for gas wells, and the pride of place when everyone benefits from a real thriving economy that meets the needs of little Coushatta, Louisiana, and of the mighty Nation she does her part to support.

Imagine bushel baskets overflowing with the freshest of home grown produce, imagine sitting in the backyard in the cool of the evening shelling purple hull peas.

Imagine all that in warm fresh air saturated with the fragrance of peaches...

What are you waiting for? Go! Go see her post and photos for yourself!

Victorian Bible Verse Cards "You Are My Friends"

These lovely calling cards with bible verses were popular during the Victorian era up through the Edwardian. This one probably dates from the turn of the last century, 1900 or so. It pictures a little girl dressed in pink among pink roses. Roses meant "Beauty" in the language of flowers, and they still do today, don't you think?

The verse on the card is the words of our Lord from John 15: 14 (King James Version)

"12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

" 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

" 14 Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. "

What a beautiful day this Sunday is.

A House with a Name

An unexpectedly free weekend... and it is too cold to do anything! 21 degrees out right now, my rain guage has a block of ice 8" tall in it, and my onion plants await their beds. Doesn't look like the onions will get planted this weekend unless tomorrow warms up considerably. So, I'll piddle around inside, make potato soup, and dream about Spring.

I an an Anglophile, and I have always wanted to live in a house that had a name. I love the British predeliction for retaining place names over grid numbers. I once got to visit London for work, and we stayed at a hotel with this address: "The Petersham, Nightingale Lane, Richmond, Surrey". My taxi driver from Heathrow airport literally picked his way there one landmark at a time. It was a fabulous hotel and visit and I will blog about it some day.


Our last house, everyone locally associated with the builder, who was well known and had lived in it for a year before we bought it. It never came to be "The Ours' house" - it was always "Oh - you mean the Theirs' house!" This house has been the same. We've been here two years and people still can't place it without the names of people who lived here before us. "Corner of..." Nope, can't place it. "Next door to..." Nope, doesn't ring a bell. "Across the street from...." Sorry, not familiar with it. Even "The house with the Texas Flag painted on the garage door" doesn't do the trick. But if we say "The Theirplace", the light of recognition immediately goes on in every eye.

I want a name for the house that isn't that of the former owners. So I have been thinking of names since we got here, and none seemed to fit.

But now I have just realized that in naming the blog (without much thought, really, since every name I thought out had been taken), I have effectively named my house! "Pecan Corner" is a fine name for a little cottage by the side of the road, don't you think?

Now I need a sign! :-)


* These photos of our house and garage were taken by Lani when she and Nick were here over Christmas weekend. Aren't they great?

Letterpress Printing, Metal Type and Amateur Journalism

I haven't talked about printing and presses here yet, but one of my hobbies is letterpress printing. I'm not talking about it right now because my press is inaccessible in the garage, and until I get it set up to use, I won't be able to have much to say.

However, you can learn more from several of the links in my sidebar under "Other Sites of Interest", and also by reading a couple of on-line publications:
The Metal Type Newsletter and The APA Journal

The work is soothing, precise, and solid. The results are permanent, lasting, memorable.

This stuff is heavy equipment for people who never dreamed they could be smitten with a machine. But oh what beautiful machines they are, and their contribution to our world is incalculable.

If you don't have a printing press, but still prefer the permanence of hard copies of your writing, the AAPA might be for you. The American Amateur Press Association is an organization that furthers independent amateur journalism. Its members may be writers, poets, artists, printers, or publishers. All produce works in small editions: some photocopied, some mimeographed, some printed on a computer printer and some set in type and printed letterpress on an old hand-pulled Kelsey - some even produce pdf files suitable for end-user printing. These works are gathered together each month in bundles and sent out to each member, all across the USA and to some foreign lands.

Organizations like the APA and the AAPA were the precursor to blogs. Then as now, ordinary people needed a way to share their writing and thoughts with the wider world, and such organizations (there are others as well still in operation) filled that need quite nicely.

I love the internet and it is a blessing to all of us, but there will always be a need for the printed word. Each has its place and it is all good.


*The photo is of an etched copper plate, bearing a Thomas Carlyle quote "May Blessings be upon the Head of Cadmus, The Phoenicians, or Whoever It Was that Invented Books."

The Naturalist's Vintage Calendar

This page for the week of January 10 through 16 from the 1926 John Burrough's Calendar reads

"The apples that cling to the trees, the pods that hang to the lowest branches, and the seeds that the various weeds and grasses hold above the deepest snows, alone make it possible for many birds to pass the winter among us." From "Signs and Seasons"

In God We Trust: Daily Life In America

I started this blog as a way to organize family recipes for the young bunch of our family, and that continues. It has also kind of evolved to include notes about traditional American life and culture, both as it was, and as it still is.


I avoid posting about politics here, aside from some links in the sidebar. Our political climate comes out of the ground of our culture. And our culture grows out of the daily lives of ordinary people. In a time of change, we can still choose to pace our own lives by natural rhythms, and this gives us a firm ground from which to select which of the modern elements we choose to take part in.


Towns like Mayberry still exist, even in the cities. And yes, we can still find ways to live real lives. America isn't in Washington, it's in our own neighborhood. As always, we have to build it ourselves.


America didn't come ready made from a foreign factory: it was built with our own two hands, walked with our own feet.


It is time today to remember that, and just start doing it again.


The photo on this post is a billboard outside of Granbury Texas, advertising Dublin Dr Pepper. Dublin, Texas, has an old bottling plant that still stubbornly uses the original recipe for Dr Pepper, including Imperial Pure Cane Sugar. The sign reads:

"Dublin Dr Pepper
In God We Trust"

No fanfare. Just a statement of one of the facts of American Life.

Psalm 56:4 (New International Version)

In God, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me?

God Bless America. God Bless Texas. And God Bless All of Us.

Three Kings Cake For Epiphany, Vintage Bisque Dolls, & the Industrial Revolution

The Kings Cake celebrates the arrival of the Three Wise Men who brought gifts to baby Jesus. A tiny doll, or a coin or almond, is hidden in each cake and the person who gets that piece is king for the day, and believed to have luck all year. One piece of the kings cake is set aside, the "piece for the Virgin" to be given to the first needy person who comes to the door. That part of the tradition reminds us to be good neighbors - and that need may be right on our doorstep.

The Kings Cake isn't a tradition in our family, and that's unfortunate. It is for my grandson, because his stepdad Francis is from Louisiana, and he buys a King Cake every year. In the South - and especially in Louisiana - the King Cake tradition is an important part of the Mardi Gras season up until Lent.

When I found this simple recipe for one using canned cinnamon rolls, I decided to try it for our Christmas breakfast this year and it was a big hit. Traditionally, you'd have this cake on January 6th, Epiphany, which is "twelfth night" or "the twelfth day of Christmas". Click here to see the original recipe at www.holidays.net

It is very easy to make your own colored sugar using food coloring, 3 separate little bowls (custard cups work great). I use toothpicks to stir with so I can just throw them away. Just stir one drop of color into a couple of teaspoons of regular granulated sugar until it's mixed in and the sugar is the color you want. Maybe two drops, but you don't need much. Red and blue mixed together (2 drops red, one blue) make purple.

Shape the canned cinnamon rolls into an oval ring, and hide a miniature baby doll in the dough. Bake as directed on the package, and use the icing that comes with it. After icing it, sprinkle with the 3 colors of sugar you made up, and serve immediately! Use 2 or more cans to serve more people. I used one of my tiny antique bisque dolls for this (an unpainted bisque one for safety since these are antique). Do be careful to warn everyone if you are using a bisque doll, so they won't break a tooth by biting it! Plastic would be better but I didn't have a plastic one.

You could also use a dried bean, a whole almond or a coin - that would be quite traditional and just as much fun. In fact, it is most likely that a coin or a bean probably were in use for centuries before the little "king babies" began to be used instead. These miniature dolls were called "pudding dolls" in England (because they were put into the Christmas pudding), and "feves" in France (Feve is french for Fava Bean, which originally represented the baby in French "Galettes des Rois" or "Couronne"). They might also be referred to as "santons", "Epiphany dolls" or "frozen charlottes" (although frozen charlottes are not always pudding dolls).



I'm no expert but the tradition of using a little doll probably started in the Victorian age. This is when the Industrial Revolution made mass production possible. Before the Industrial Revolution, most goods were handmade, and made locally. Only the wealthy could afford imported products made elsewhere that weren't necessary to life. But when machines began to be invented, the creation of factory jobs and markets meant ordinary people had money to spend on something other than necessities. Trinkets and toys were suddenly inexpensive to make and the availability of money generated more commerce - locally as well as between regions and nations.


In France, the tradition of the baby in the cake really took off, and whole sets of little people in different costumes, called "feves" were made and used in the cakes. The various costumes represented each of the people in the village, who also would have visited the baby Jesus during the Nativity. Bakeries encouraged sales by putting a different figure in each cake. I always wondered why the popularity of those little sets. Now we know what their original purpose was!

Most of my little porcelain and bisque figures were made in Germany or Japan in the 1920s through the 1950s. I wonder how many of them were originally used in Kings Cakes, here in the USA?

Happy (Old) New Year! A Naturalist's Vintage Calendar

Did you find a vintage calendar for the upcoming year? Here are the first pages from a beautiful weekly one of John Burroughs quotes. It was for the year 1926, and is accurate again for 2010.


The page for January 1 and 2 reads "The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world.", from "The Summit of the Years".

Week two, January 3 through 9, has this "A severe artist is Winter! No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel." from "Winter Sunshine".



In a previous post, there's a list of the calendars that correspond to 2010, and a link to information on which of the 14 calendar grids are applicable to any particular year. Jot down years from your favorite eras and take the list shopping with you.

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version)

Happy (Old) New Year!

The Lovingest Season: Sending Christmas Cards

For years I prepared to send Christmas cards. Often I bought them. Sometimes I got as far as addressing them. I hardly ever got around to mailing them tho.

Sending Christmas cards does not have to be an ordeal, nor does it mean sending dozens. Once I understood that, I finally accomplished my goal. Write a few to friends farthest away. That done, write a few more to next door neighbors. A few at a time is the way to go for me. Simple signatures inside, no attempt at writing a letter. Keeping it simple keeps me from getting overwhelmed with good intentions. The past couple of Christmases, I have succeeded in actually sending them.

As a result, we get more cards too. It is a nice thing, to get a card in the mail. Each is a little bright spot in the day. A little more love in the Lovingest Season.

I bought our cards the other day. A bargain at $5 for a box of 18. We've had trouble the past couple of years finding traditional cards but this year they were plentiful. That is a good sign!

One cute place I found online, for printing your own cards, is Jan Brett's website, with adorable hedgehogs and mice. Just click the "Cards" tab. The envelope templates are there too. All you need is plain white printer paper.

If you find vintage cards, they are wonderful to recycle with a note of your own added. I used some 1950s greeting cards as markers for Bunko last time I hosted it and people loved them. It's a kick for a collector! Double the reason to pack the card away with the ornaments to enjoy again next year.

The vintage Christmas post cards in the photo above are from 1913, and are embossed with glossy color, as was common for the time. Two are actual Christmas messages. The third, with the meaning of Cedar in the language of flowers ("Cedar: I live for thee"), was mailed in October 1913. If you find or make blank ones, postcards cost only 28 cents to mail in 2009.

Christmas cards give us a chance to reach out to people we might otherwise feel shy about approaching, and to those we think of fondly. It's a small way to be a good neighbor, and a good friend.

Small traditions, like Christmas cards, add up to preserve a good way of life.

Cottage Industry, Vintage Christmas Toys, and WWII

Before WWII broke out (for the US - it had already started in Europe) with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States imported vast amounts of the goods in our stores from Germany and Japan. Once we were at war with these countries, suddenly there was a dearth of products. US factories that might have picked up the slack were diverted to production of necessary items and defense material.

Retailers around the country began looking closer to home to source toys, dishes, printed items, novelties and other non-essentials that, then as now, made up the bulk of their profitable sales.

This created an opportunity boom for families everywhere. Then as now, families were always looking for ways to bring in extra income, whether by taking second jobs or producing sellable goods from home businesses.

Some bought small printing presses and set up businesses doing custom printing of business cards, Christmas cards, and wedding invitations out of a corner of their house. New potteries sprang up in areas that had good sources of clay in the ground. And some, like Nandy and Mema, used their home workshop to build toys.


With metal rationed, the raw materials available were perfect for small-scale manufacturing: wood, cloth, paper. Nandy started a business building small wooden toys that he sold to Kress Department Store, which was located downtown on Main Street. I don't think Kresses was still in business when the boys were little but if you have ever been in an Alco or a Dollar General, it was a lot like that. These stores were a mainstay and everyone shopped at them. Kress, Woolworths, Ben Franklins were the Walmart/K-Marts of their day.

So Nandy and Mema made little cars, trucks, trains out of wood. Nandy would cut out the pieces at night after work, and Mema would help paint and assemble them.

Do you remember that Mema was missing part of one of her thumbs? She helped with cutting some of the parts while Nandy was at work and one day the saw went through the wood and cut off her thumb, and into her pointer finger. She always told that when she called the hospital, they asked "Are you sure you cut it off?" to which she replied "Yes I am sure, I am in the house and my thumb is laying out in the garage on the saw!" Her first finger was always stiff after that - and Nandy did all the cutting with saws after that too!

Mama still has a few of the toys Nandy made at that time: a black Locomotive, and a little army jeep. The toys that the boys made with him in his workshop were from the same kinds of patterns, and same materials. These toys were a big success and, along with renting out the other half of their duplex, helped them pay off their mortgage ten years early.

Other people all over the country made toys and souveniers like this too. Some mixed glue and sawdust to form a "composition" material that they molded into toys, like the little battleships and planes pictured above. Some items were decorated with paint and others were woodburned with heated pokers or special woodburning tools.

These little items are readily available still in antique shops and flea markets - since they were unbranded, they have never been "hot" as collectibles. True to their era, they have an enduring charm and lasting appeal.

They also remind us of the unbounded creativity that allows us to find and make what we need in our own back yards.

Flea Marketeer Party! Recent Favorite Finds

The Flea Market Style Magazine Blog is hosting an "I'm a Flea Marketeer" party. I am posting a little early since I go to work at 6:30 am. Be sure to see the fun posts from other Friends of Flea Market Style over at their website after you finish reading here. Thanks to them for linking back here too, both on their Friends page and for this party!


Since Paul sells antiques (check out our Ruby Lane Shop linked from the sidebar - he lists new things each week), there's always a good excuse to shop. Selling is fun because there is always something even more wonderful around the corner. But it's even more fun to keep things for a while until (if ever) I am ready to part with them!

Recent keepers include this adorable old German Porcelain Pig milk pitcher, dressed like a Monk with his keys and his cowl. He probably dates from the turn of the last century, 1890s to 1910ish. Why yes, I do have a small collection of figural animal pitchers, and he is my new favorite.


Another collection that kind of crept up on me is World War I and WWII Homefront memorabilia, and other keepsakes from WWI. This candy tin features a portrait of King George V of England, and was made as a Christmas gift in 1914 from the Cadbury company to the wounded soldiers and sailors in hospital. Paul brought it home recently and I batted my eyes until he turned loose of it. Ok maybe that doesn't count as *my* find but it is my keeper! :-)



Our church had a rummage sale last week and I bought an antique "Taylor Storm-O-Guide" Barometer, dated 1927. I have been keeping my eyes open for one since I started getting interested in traditional weather prediction a couple of months ago.

What makes this particular one extra special is that it used to be in my house. The woman who donated it to the rummage sale used to live here and had it during that time (More about the history of our little house in a post later this week).


I bought this English cutting board at Ricochet Antiques, my favorite shop in town. The verse woodburned around the edge is called "The Lancashire Poacher". The little mouse in his hunting gear, with his shotgun and sack is also woodburned. Only three words to decribe it:
cute-cute-cute!


Do you have favorite finds you want to share? Come join the party! Post over at Flea Market Style, and do feel free to post your link on Pecan Corner here as well!

For The Life Of The World

Here is another antique Sunday School card, showing the Manna that God sent to feed the Hebrews during their exodus out of slavery in Egypt.


The associated Bible reading is Exodus 16:1-15. God sent them Manna in the mornings and Quail in the evenings that they could gather each day for their "daily bread and meat". Except on Fridays, when twice as much fell, so that they could gather enough for the Sabbath too and not have to work on the Sabbath.

The Golden Text of the day is the words of Our Lord Jesus as recorded in John 6:51:

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.“

Living Life by a Vintage Calendar

I didn't know until a few years ago when I was printing a calendar page for a letterpress bundle, but there are only 14 different calendar grids. There is a great website called the Virtual Perpetual Calendar where you can look up which years are the same (click on the "Year Correlations" link).

In addition to going back as far as 1901, the year correlations are also posted for the next hundred years in the future, so if you want to make your own calendars it would also be a super resource.


Since then, I make a point to find an old calendar each year to use. I hang it in my laundry room, and it is kind of a whisper of perspective to the days: "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

This year's calendar is from 1959, and has an article about organizing the kitchen to make it easier to get brown bag lunches in the mornings. Some of the holidays are the same, but those determined by astronomical events such as phases of the moon are not, as the lunar calendar is not the same as the solar one. Some vintage calendars, like this one, also contain a lot of historical dates that aren't usually on today's calendars.

For next year, I've already bought the one I want to use. It is a 1937 advertising calendar hand-painted on a bamboo mat, made in Japan before WWII. The little calendar pad was intended to have each month torn away as it passed. To avoid that, I will find a bobby pin to clip
it up with.

Here are the calendars that correspond with 2010:
1999, 1993, 1982, 1971, 1965, 1954, 1943, 1937, 1926, 1915, 1909

While some vintage calendars can be expensive, there are so many different kinds that can still be had for a couple of dollars, especially the almanac type that drug stores still give out each year.

And that's another option, too: a current calendar put out by your pharmacy. I think the Cardui/Black Drought is still used by a lot of them.

The hunt is half the fun, so pick your favorite era and see what you find!

Update 12/31/09 for those who may be visiting from a link to the post found on Leslie's blog:
here's the latest about vintage calendars: Happy (Old) New Year! And thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back again.

Vintage Sunday School Card: Paul the Tentmaker

This is a vintage Sunday School card, copyrighted in 1897, picturing Paul sewing a tent at the end of his second missionary journey. He was a tent-maker by trade and worked at this when he was not traveling. The reading of the week was Acts 18:1-22.


The Bible Verse of the Day, or "Golden Text" as it is referred to, is in Jesus own words:
"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." John 16:33

These cards were given, one each week, to children who came to Sunday School. Kids collected them and traded them and tried to get a full collection of them. These that I have are printed by a technique called "chromolithograph" which gives them beautiful rich color.

Thrifty Happiness: Red Points used Wisely

Brookshire's has pork chops on sale for 99 cents a pound! Even though there is a limit, I was able to get enough to put away 6 packages of 4 chops each for a sum total of about $9.50. Talk about wise use of "red points"! I am so pleased.

"Red points" is a phrase from the days of Rationing during WWII in the 1940's. The war actually started in September 1939, but the US did not enter the war until after we were attacked by Japan in December 1941. So this month is the 60th anniversary of World War II.

Since everyone was fighting each other, imports and exports were all interrupted. This, along with the need to switch manufacturing from plowshares to swords, meant shortages for many types of goods. We'll talk about the great dearth of toys and how Americans (including Mema and Nandy) responded to that on another day.

Thus, during the war, the government set up a rationing system to help spread out limited supplies so that everyone could have their share. There were points for gasoline, tires, sugar, butter, shoes - and meat. Red points were for meat. Thrifty wives used their red points carefully so as to stretch their meat budget as far as they could. They sort of rationed themselves in the use of their ration books.


You can learn more about how rationing actually worked, in the PBS program "1940s House". It is available from Netflix. Not all of the period house series are good but this one is, because the family made every effort to be true to the times and to really live as a London family would have lived during the Blitz. Although it is set in England, many elements of the time were the same here in the USA.

Aren't these spoons neat? One is engraved "Thrifty" and one "Happiness". I have had them for so long that I don't remember where I got them. Originally, they probably came in oatmeal or laundry soap or as a grocery store promotion on the 1940s or 1950s. I always watch for others with industrious mottos on them but have never found any more.

Vintage Photos: Child Actors in Mexican Costume

Aren't these little actors wonderful? No, they aren't family (although that little girl does remind me of Frances except Frances is not that old!). These photos date from the turn of the last century... the 1890's to maybe as late as the Nineteen "teens".



I love the way the children's costumes show off three different elements of traditional Mexican culture. ¿mismo dulce, sí? (What does that say, Valerie? I cheated and used Babblefish. ;-))

The photos are mounted on cardstock (as was customary in the era in which they were made - and this is one element used to help date them) and are fairly large. We sell a lot of photos but I also have a small collection of those I am just not ready to give up yet. These little siblings are in that category.

I've never been one to want lots of photos of the family, and I don't have many photos out on display. I guess in part it is because it makes me miss those so much more than I always do already.

Vintage images, though, of people I never knew, enthrall me as little slices of life captured to show us that human nature does not change. Fashions change, customs change, but the reality does not.

Vintage Dutch Postcards

Within my collection of vintage photos, I ran across these lovely ones from The Netherlands, before WWI (World War One). These were the everyday clothes of the people who lived there before the great technological, scientific and industrial breakthroughs of the 20th Century put us all the world over into blue jeans and sneakers.

Notice the skylight in the roof, and how the man stands before an open window to mend his nets? Before electricity, interiors were lit only at night, as people would not want to waste fuel by burning their oil or kerosene lamps during the day. In the old downtown parts of cities, you sometimes can still see the wells in sidewalks that were built to allow windows in basements of buildings.